Civilization V Review

Civilization 5 is a fantastic turn-based strategy game that retains the same addictive gameplay the first Civilization brought to PC gaming almost 20 years ago. Accessible, beautiful, and full of new concepts, Civ 5 is a solid sequel that should appeal to both new and old players alike.

The Pros

Beautiful presentation and simplified interface

New game elements offer more replay variety

Tried and true addictive gameplay intact

The Cons

Diplomatic model is anemic

AI is fairly average

Civilization 5 Review:

Civilization 5 may have evolved, but the founding principles of the series are still very much apparent. Turn by turn, players will continue to build cities, research advanced technology, lead armies and ultimately emerge (hopefully!) as the dominant culture on the planet. Victory conditions are roughly the same as the first game, allowing players to blast into space for a scientific victory or fall back on old reliable command and conquering to stake their claim. There’s also the ability to play multiplayer. But hold onto your monocles: times they are a-changin'.

Extreme Makeover: Sid Meier Edition

The most impressive change to the series can be seen instantly upon starting Civilization V. Gone are the chunky squares, which have been replaced by hexes. The hexes allow for gorgeous pieces of rendered art: rivers to flow into oceans or dense forests to fade into industrialized zones seamlessly.

With a scroll of the mouse wheel, one can zoom out to bear witness over his kingdom or snap up close to watch workers constructing a mine on a hill to increase its gold output. This new world is one dying to be explored, with ancient ruins and natural wonders that can yield a bonus to those willing to risk the wilds of the undiscovered territory. Civ 5 is one beautiful strategy game, but it's more than just a pretty face.

Whether or not you have played a Civilization game before, you will be able to play Civ V thanks to a complete overhaul of its user interface. Important commands are always a click away, pop-up icons notify leaders of key developments, and the advisors are ready to assist with almost any information needed to plan a society's future. The interface improvements also make playing “one more turn” much easier, so more time can be spent on the 4Xs (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) instead of slugging through menus. If you have the patience for turn-based strategy games, Civilization 5 is perfection.

Less perfect is the reimagined combat model, which trades up to single military units occupying each hex versus stacks of doom, where players would place all their forces on one square and move that army around decimating everything in their path. In many ways, the combat refinement helps the flow of the game, making each unit more precious and capable while letting tactics carry the day instead of brute strength. Archers and siege weapons can fire at range while remaining protected by front-line troops who gain bonuses for flanking or proximity.

In practice, the change can make moving large numbers of units feel more like playing an elaborate slide puzzle than executing a tactical offensive. However, leading a small force to an enemy city or fending off an impetuous AI scorned, is more natural than any stack-based system ever offered.

While tactics may rule each battle, strategy is key to winning the war. Added to the arsenal are two new concepts for the Civilization series: City-States and Social Policies. City-States are autonomous cities that can be allied with for military units or bonuses of food for city growth. They'll cry for help or make demands, and can even lead Civs to war over them.

As there are more City-States than Civs in the game, they are valuable pawns if on your side. Sometimes, their requests are unrealistic, such as destroying a rival City-State on the other side of the map or building a road to them through enemy territory, but mostly they are a welcome addition towards a non-combat victory. Having non-Civs to interact with also will give a bit more depth to the game, especially because the diplomatic game so flawed.

Beyond researching technologies, would-be leaders can employ Social Policies to tailor empire building to their needs. Think of social policies as another technology tree, although their benefits affect the civilization on a whole rather than making a particular unit or building type available. In the course of play, picking policies is a defining moment and, as some paths are mutually exclusive, it’s another way to yield unique in-game experiences for future play sessions.

For instance, by adopting Honor-based policies, armies are made stronger, while a Patronage path can make the allegiance of City-States more beneficial. None seem particularly powerful enough to make one path a go-to for every player. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to tell which policies rival leaders have adopted in order to keep up with the joneses or counter their strategy. Also, shared ideologies have no bearing on relations.

Diplomatic Immunity...Has Just Been Revoked!

Diplomacy has never been a strong suit of the series, but Civilization 5 takes a step backward from the transparency and variety in Civilization IV. Players will be hard-pressed to know how AI civilizations truly feel about them, until the scoreboard declares them as hostile or their leader calls for war.

In Civ 5, first contact only has three real options: requesting a Pact of Cooperation, asking them not to settle near you, or walking away. Each time I tried to request a Pact, they always answered with the equivalent of “No thanks.” Pacts seem to yield no real benefit as the AI makes decisions purely on the size of your army's muscles. Diplomacy in-game is like meeting someone at a party and saying right-off-the-bat “Let's be BFFs!” or “Hit on my girlfriend and I'll punch you in the face.” Civilization has always been a war game, but the other elements could have been made that much more interesting with a more sophisticated and less dumbed down diplomatic model.

The lack of diplomacy is most likely a byproduct of the AI's continued inability to truly understand the nuances of the game. That's not to say the AI is bad in Civ 5; in many ways, the AI is quite competent enough to figure out the big picture, though it will occasionally trot out its siege units to the front-line or go to war because one lonely spearman marches along a shared border. As Civilization V is primarily a single player game, the AI has to be strong, and while the higher difficulty levels don't make the AI any smarter, the default AI level shouldn't be too shabby for the average player.

You Have Entered The Future Era

While this doesn’t affect the review, I'd be remiss not to talk a bit about Mods in Civilization 5. With prior games, it was a complicated affair to find and install user generated content, but always well worth the struggle. The community created amazing content for the game, including new units or buildings, revamped tech trees, outer space and fantasy settings, you name it. Now, installing them is accessible from within the game. At the time of publication, only test mods were available, but considering the creativity of Civ's fanbase, one expects that to grow significantly over the next few months. If Kael ever creates a Civilization V Fall from Heaven mod, prepare to lose another month of your life.
All Roads Lead To...
Civilization 5 is a fantastic turn-based strategy game, retaining the same addictive gameplay the first Civilization brought to PC gaming almost 20 years ago. In many ways, Civ V is the best representation of the series and certainly the most accessible for new and old players alike. Not all of the changes work or enhance the game, but most are a large improvement towards an even more playable entertainment experience. Between Starcraft 2 and Civilization 5, PC gaming is far from dead, folks!

Civilization 5 was tested on an Intel Core i7-875k processor with both a NVIDIA GTX 460 video card and GTX 260 under Windows 7.

Comments are Closed

The game lost a lot of its great features from Civ 4. They cut important diplomacy tools, tech trading, map trading, map editing, and interaction with other civilizations.I use Civ 4 to teach my social studies classes and create a fun creative writing and learning environment, I cannot do that with Civ 5. With most sequels, the designers killed the franchise with this newest release. They need to go and make this game more fun, interactive, and educator friendly. For the quality of game here, I could put my students on Facebook and let them play some point and click crap.I give the game 2/5 personally.Graphics 5/5Re-playability 3/5Diplomacy 1/5Educational 1/5Civilizations 5/5Audio 3/5

Civ 5 need to improve in many ways.1) i loved TECHNOLOGY TRADING and forcing civilization to give up. i can do that in civ 42) what happen to MAP TRADING.3) dumb AI player.4) Better game set up. Like types of game play. diplomacy game play, culture game play or science game play

this game will get a 5/5 when firaxsis fixes combat, diplomacy, and ally ai.i dont call war placing a single spearman in-between 3 enemy cities and letting them pund you until you die "war" but the ai does. i dont call randomly forcing your ally into peace with a civ there about to kill giving them time recources to rebuild "an ally" but the ai does. and i definitly dont call denoucing someone pr telling them they have a puny army when yours in 10x smaller then them and your situation is horrible "smart diplomacy" but the fricken ai does. things like that need to be changed and they could be pretty easy fixes.

so, did you guys even play the game before writing this review?, or was it just the 100 turn demo? anyone who has spent serious time with the title knows its not nearly a 5/5, maybe an expansion or two down the road it will be. nice of you to mention multiplayer, except you left out the fact its almost completely broken, and with no hotseat in game (they've claimed since launch it will be patched in eventually, i've heard that one before) your only left to face off against the AI who has no idea how to tactically use the new 1upt system.

After playing so much Civ5 I think it was time to make my review on my blog: http://www.spacesector.com/blo g/2010/12/sid-meiers-civilizat ion-5-review/

Feel free to criticise, correct or comment, specially on the section about the changes from Civ4 (what was removed and added, for sure there are many things I could not remember).

I think I will not keep playing, I'll wait for the next patches and then give it another try. As you'll read in my review my biggest complaints go for diplomacy, global happiness and boredom (not too much things to do).

while i know its a great game, its legendary, but its not for me. im all for strategy games, but more in the form of rts. the tbs kills me aha. not that i would be able to stand up against pros online or even the AI on any sort of harder difficulty, either way, the game was just to slow for me. (yes i actually tried the demo, though i stopped around turn 90 even though i just found out there was a 100 turn cap anyways lol) either way ill stick to my StarCraft 2s and Diablos and Dragon Age Orginssss....lol

civ v sucks out of box. if you dont yet own it i would wait until it 1) got way cheaper than 50$ and 2) monitor the forums and ask users if the ai fail and the bugs and glitches have been fixed yet. otherwise play other proven strategy games. 1/5.

I cannot believe that it isn't covered that this game is being sold in an unfinished state. This turn based game lumbers on a quad core computer with stats enough to run Starcraft2 flawlessly. There are many head-scratching omissions and finding info in the UI is aggravating. The AI is more or less ruined on Archipeligo maps. Pros are that the fighting is fun and the civs are good enough to give replayability. Graphics and some fresh ideas are welcome - although many will be hard for long time Civ fans to adapt to.I really really feel that I was playing a beta with the many problems this game has. How can a game that crashes or doesn't even boast any reward after winning a 20+ hour game get 5/5?

Okay someone pointed out there are 12 leaders in CIV V. I never really counted. It seems too few. In Beyond the Sword it brings up 10 new civilizations and leaders (Babylonia, Byzantine Empire, Ethiopian Empire, Holy Roman Empire, Khmer Empire, the Mayans, Native Americans, Netherlands, Portugal and Sumer) from the vanilla CIV IV. Likewise, 6 new leaders for existing civilizations (Abe Lincoln, de Gaulle, Boudica, Darius I, Suleiman the Magnificent and Pericles) from the vanilla CIV IV. The original Vanilla CIV IV has 18 different civilizations and 28 leaders in the Vanilla CIV IV. Hopefully I did not miscount. Bottomline, why did CIV V come with so few? I expect a future game to be as well as the previous games. Likewise, to learn from previous mistakes. The last launch of vanilla civ IV was terrible. Buggy and unpolished. I am still wondering why I can not skip the old babbling old guy intro as soon as I see a blue hole in his tent. The Hexagonic 1 unit per hex map is great, but somoene forgot to tell the AI how to fight. A very defensive melee unit upfront and strong archers (range unit) in the back seem to almost always win. Yet the computer offers no counters or flanking attacks or adapts or uses the same strategy. Hopefully the first patch or two will address the AI. personally, I remember CIV IV being terrible at launch. I stopped playing it, truth be said. Back then, people said it was too dumb down and too easy compared to CIV III. Several months past and Beyond the Sword came out and the Mech caufht my eye (I am a huge mech fan and love Battletech), so I got it and loved it! The modding community, help create several mods and improvements on the AI which was used officially in BtS. So, I guess we may have to wait?

I was a bit disapointed with the $99.99 price tag for Civilization V's collectors edition and the game in general.

I believe I am comparing it too much to CIV IV. But that is not fair. I am really comparing it to BtS (the CIV IV expansion, Beyond the Sword) ... and the fact we get so FEW civilizations to play with. How many did we get in this one? 7? 9? Yet with Civilization 4, we had so many different choices and options.

I was thinking. I did not like vanilla civilization IV nearly as much as Beyond the Sword. So I am hoping the mods and expansions will make the expansion an worthy successor to Beyond the Sword. AND DARN IT TO @@@@, make Wonders more powerful and religions more .... i dunno... interesting.

Here are my thoughts:

The UI needs some serious love. Especially lacking is the track enemy units option that was in Civs 1-4. Instead we get some plug ugly icon that we have to click on. PAH! The UI seems like it was made for the WII instead of a PC. And finally even though every retail launch CIV has this problem, the AI is not that impressive.

Civilization V is not Civilization IV:

It s just not. Let s just put that dead horse to rest right now. I loved IV. I still love IV. But to compare these two games to one another really wouldn t do either one justice. Some components of IV please me more and some parts of V make me happier. A lot of that is really subjective so we ll just leave it there for this review. Any comparison to the past can be read as a reference to the Civ pedigree, not exclusively the previous title. In many ways this is the most difficult bit to write. I m stuck between loving (and yes, enjoying very much) the new gameplay changes and constantly asking myself, not why did they change x, y or z from CiV IV but why did they make a particular decision at all or why didn t they carry it forward logically into a better iteration?

Empire building in general is pretty straightforward. Each building has a purpose (money, science, production, food or culture) and each category has tiers of awesomeness that you can climb, if you ve balanced your happy / cash seesaw appropriately. My only problem with this is that it s very, very transparent and maybe too straightforward?

Warfare is excellent. Single unit per tile was a good way to go. Hexes increase fairness and require a bit more thought and planning, which is a good thing. Fighting is in many ways the most satisfying part of Civilization V. The only drawback is that no one seems to have told the AI how to do it. If it gets the drop on you and invades when you aren t ready it can seem pretty intimidating. If it can t overwhelm you with units however then it seems to just give up and wait for the end. I ve played for a day now and I feel confident of my ability to invade a foe twice my size (currently happening in the game I m playing now) Once I break his main line he s done. It s over. He just rolls over. In a week from now am I still going to want to bother? The AI, in my opinion, is a severe shortcoming of Civilization V. It also has the very funny habit of sending undefended workers into the front lines. Why? I have no idea. But it does so consistently, so you can capture enemy works and force them to work for you. Saves build time.

The result is that the AI opponents don t feel like people. They don t have the personality of the foes from past games. They just feel like AIs that are all plotting against you in some rudimentary, 1990s AI kind of way that you really don t need to think about too much. He ll build lots of units so I ll build lots of units is all you need to know. The flavor is completely gone and no amount of animation or voice acting is going to change that

One final but important thought on diplomacy: city-states. They re just awesome. They re pure win and there is nothing negative to say about them. I want to see a component of an expansion dedicated to these guys because they were one of the breaths of fresh air that the series needed. They re fantastic. Did I mention that I really like city-states?The hex system makes the world look very nice and makes it more fun to explore. The oil-painted overall look of the map is excellent. The different tile sets for different continents are just plain cool and will add to the replayability of the game. In other words, their heart was in the right place with the art style of the game, but many of the details seem like they could have used more careful judgment or more time in the creative process. A lot of details look just plain rushed, though.

If this all seems somewhat contradictory and it doesn t leave you with a real thumbs up-thumbs down feeling on the game, then that s perfect because that s exactly how I feel about the game. I keep playing, which has to be worth something I m just not sure if I ll be playing four years from now like some other games I won t mention. I like the game and its changes, but I m not sure if I ll keep liking them or more importantly if they were worth what the series lost. While I m playing I keep getting this feeling like I m having fun and this thing has high production value and oh that s neat and this is cool

Few civilizations, wonders that are just not wonderous, fewer cutscenes, more bugs, bad AI, inept AI, a loss of religion, and a babbling old guy for an intro that you can not skip (and if you try to skip it half the itmes you can about half way into it and the other half CTD)...

with all that in mind, they have, FINALLY, GDR - Giant Death Robot mechs as part of a cannon future.... yeah..... ok....

Not too bad, but NOT a 5.... a solid 4 and with patching a 4.5.... but 5...? Did you even play BtS?

hey fool reviewer jake dont say it as addictive like heroin and cigs unless u have actually been hooked on them as someone who was i can tell u ur comparison is not accurate just saying my friend i understand ur trying to hype it up but i can tell u nothing is better then heroin and cigs this game doesnt let u experience heaven or see GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!! :)

Server Error in '/' Application.

Runtime Error

Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".

Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.